


Red Red Wine

by driggs



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Beer, Bisexuality, Drag Queens, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Hipsters, London, M/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:37:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9620426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driggs/pseuds/driggs
Summary: Clara discovers a lively, rundown East London boozer full of many eccentric characters. A series of vignettes; very unlikely to develop a real plot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up this morning thinking about the locals at my favorite pub and how fun it would be to throw Clara into the fray. Every bar and club mentioned in this story actually exists, along with some of the pub patrons. The Doctor takes the place of a regular my brother and I lovingly refer to as "The Director," an older man with gelled back hair and a pencil mustache, always wearing a camel overcoat and a scarf, always sitting alone and writing in a notebook at the bar.

“This pub is open,” Clara said, pointing across the street while looking at her phone.

Her companion grimaced. “Can’t we just go to The Queen Adelaide? It’s not far.”

“The East London queer scene is far too small for us to be going to both The Queen Adelaide and Savage in one night.”  Clara started to cross the street, not bothering to wait. “Ash, come off it! Just a pint or two, then we’ll meet Jack.”

“You’re just worried you’ll run into that tart you got off with last week,” Ash shouted, jogging to catch up.

Pushing open the worn black door, Clara was hit by the heat and humidity of a moderately busy East London boozer. While some of their sort were about (the young, fashionably dressed), mostly it looked like a lot of old neighbourhood sorts. Rough faces on both the men and women; builders with paint splatterings on their trousers. The crowd had to have an average age of fifty from the looks of it.

Clara spotted one East London brew among the expected sorts of taps and quickly slid up to an open space at the bar to order.

“Oi, is this ‘Ackney or Bethnal Green, then?” came the judgmental voice of a man who looked as if he’d been born on the well worn carpet of the pub about sixty years earlier. The sharpness of his accent sounding like chewing on aluminium foil tasted.

Shrugging and indifferent to his anti-hipster vitriol (she had a decent job but couldn’t even dream of affording one of those wanky luxury flats on the canal, _thank you very much_ ), Clara turned back towards the bar where a harried young man looked at her desperately. “Two pints of Neck Oil, please,” she ordered.

“Music’s not too bad,” Ash said, taking a look. “Nowhere to sit, though.”

Taking a look around, Clara saw one of the high top tables with four seats had only two occupants and nodded towards them. “Go see if you can nick those two seats.”

“Nine pound fifty,” the bartender said, placing two pints in front of Clara.

As she walked over to join Ash, _Red Red Wine_ began to play. Clara saw the occupants of the table she was about to join Ash at gesture excitedly.

“Red fucking wine, dude,” one yelled to the other, who whooped in response. Americans. Of course.

Ash turned to Clara, exasperated. “Why are we here?”

Clara clinked her glass against her friend’s, then took a sip of her beer. “London is filthy with Americans, even if we thought we were safe at a pub like this.”

As the Americans loudly sang along, Clara took a look around. In the back, next to a wall-mounted jukebox, was a snooker table. A crowd was gathered around it, including an enormous woman blowing vape clouds nearly her size. At the bar were a few older men, all grizzled, all sitting in silence and watching sports intently on the small TV in the opposite corner, even though the channel was playing highlight footage from a golf match earlier in the day. The bar seemed to be divided nearly the same as the borough boundaries the judgmental man at the bar had asked for Clara to define: the younger sorts that would have been happy to leg it to Corsica in a few hours near the entrance, the locals in the back, holding tight control over the few bits they still had to themselves.

A side door opened and Clara watched as an older gentleman walked in.

“The Magician,” one of the Americans whispered excitedly to the other. “You definitely need to figure out what his deal is tonight, bro. He’s worn that outfit every time we’ve come here.”

The nickname fit the man in question: wild curls of silver hair, sinister eyebrows, a thin frame, and an outfit that made him look somewhere between a Teddy Boy and a Skinhead (before they forgot their style and took on all the fascism and violence instead) on the dandy scale. He sat down at the bar and pulled a notebook from an inner pocket, then began writing in it.

Ash observed Clara’s observations. “There are two gorgeous young idiots at this table opposite us, pick of gender, and yet you’re enamored with _the pensioner?_  Typical.”

The beginning notes of _Ashes to Ashes_ began to fill the pub and Clara noticed an upturn at the corner of The Magician’s mouth. She felt her phone vibrate and pulled it out of her coat pocket.

“Jack’s in the queue for Savage. Says a mate inside said it’s already quite a crowd and we should hurry.”

“All right, let me finish my beer and put on some lipstick,” Ash said, taking a sip of her beer. “You should invite your new toy boy.” 

Clara blushed. “You’re bloody horrible sometimes. Shot for the road?”

Ash rolled her eyes as she finished her beer. “Go on, then.” She got up and started walking towards the toilet, then turned back around to shout: “no Jager!”

Collecting their empty glasses to bring back to the bar, Clara took the empty space next to The Magician. The buzz of the beer (and the two bottles of wine she and Ash had split at dinner before) got the better of her as she looked over at his notebook.

“Bowie fan?” she thought she had said, though at the lack of immediate response, it was possible it hadn’t been out loud.

The young bartender came over, slightly less hurried now that the younger crowd had mostly cleared out. “All right?” 

“Two shots of Jager, please,” Clara said, pleased that she could get a bit of revenge on her friend for the teasing. 

“Been a Bowie fan since longer than you’ve been alive,” came a gravelly, low voice. Scottish. There was a bit of everything going in the pub, wasn’t there?

“Is that why you’ve done up the top button with no tie, then?” Clara said, not making eye contact. 

“Maybe. Could also be a David Lynch fan,” He closed his notebook, taking a sip from his drink. “Or just reside in Hackney.” 

“Could also be a magician,” Clara joked, finally looking over. 

He didn’t smile, but there was no malice in his tone. “I get that a lot, actually.”

“That’s what those Americans over there have been calling you, anyhow.” 

He glanced back briefly. “Can think of worse things to be called. ‘American’ being at the top of the list.”

Clara laughed properly at that as the bartender brought over her shots. Ash appeared just in time, sporting a very vibrant red lipstick.

“Well you look fucking gorgeous now,” Clara said, handing Ash a shot. “A shame Savage is mostly gay men.”

“But it’s full of _exactly_ the sort of gay men that will appreciate this lipstick,” Ash said, clinking the shot against Clara’s.  “Let’s go absolutely mental tonight, love,” she said as a sort of cheers as she tossed it back in a synchronised motion with her friend. 

Ash grabbed her friend’s arm, “let’s go!”

“Hold on,” Clara said, nodding back at The Magician.

Ash groaned. “I’ll be outside, having a puff.”

Clara turned back to the older man. “What is your name if it’s not ‘The Magician’?”

He picked up his drink and held it to his mouth, then looked up at her and smirked. “The Doctor.”


End file.
